Is it Starbucks? A couple of weeks ago, it was Major Garvin in Orlando ready to go to the mats over a frappucino. Now it’s Barbara Nevers of the Chicago Police Department. I mean, sure the coffee is good, but is it worth committing a crime?
Via Turley, who has a special interest in this particular Starbucks (as opposed to the one a block away, I guess), another cop who can’t keep her gun holstered when it comes to demanding her vente fix.
Yet another police officer has been suspended for threatening Starbucks employees with arrest or worst if they did not continue to fork over free coffee. Chicago police officer Barbara Nevers has been suspended for 15 months for allegedly demanding both free coffee and baked goods.
The 55-year-old Nevers allegedly threatened Starbucks employees by screaming at them and flashing her badge, handcuffs or gun when they wanted her to pay. For that, you only get a suspension in Chicago?
The story of coffee in Nevers-land includes the unpleasant condition of a suspension. Some might wonder why it’s different when a cop threatens with a gun, or when a cop walks out without paying. For others, this might be considered, oh, a crime?
But then, others will say, at least they did something to her. After all, a 15 month suspension isn’t chopped liver. True, but it’s not exactly a criminal prosecution either, now is it?
What’s interesting about this round of impropriety, when compared to the olden days of cops being offered, and accepting, freebies from local merchants, as was the case in the old Serpico scandal, is that these are merchants offering a cup of joe to appease those who are paid to protect and serve. They are taking by force. And when the merchants resist, they have no qualms about using their clout to force the issue.
The oddity is that these same individuals may very well be great cops otherwise. Brave and strong, willing to save kittens from trees, plenty of ribbons on their chests. Just because they have a taste for expensive coffee doesn’t mean they are criminals through and through. Maybe they’re just thirsty.
Or maybe we’re seeing that cultural thing that somehow falls into the law enforcement blind spot, where the same conduct that might give rise to a good whupping, or a taser if one is too stuffed from baked goods to become physically involved, falls within the ambit of a perk of the job.
The Chicago Sun-Times article includes a list of other decisions by the police board released at the same time. My personal favorite is the cop with two wives. Talk about a bad decision.
Even if we assume that these are the “one bad apple” cops that seem to pop up on an hourly basis, where are the partners, the “honest” cops we keep hearing about. No, no, only kidding. You know this is just rhetorical.
I want to assume that somewhere, there’s a law enforcement officer, current or past, blushing as they read about these misadventures in policing. It’s been my position for some time that until a cultural broom sweeps clean the mindset of police that they are entitled to ignore the same laws that they apply to others, nothing changes. So we keep talking about these crimes perpetrated by police officers on the job.
Maybe something will eventually sink in. Maybe. I can only hope.
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I think your point about the missing “good” cops is one that you ought to hammer at again and again (and you do!)
If there really are good cops out there, and more to the point, if they are supposedly the “majority,” then why the hell when there’s a “bad cop” found out it is NEVER from a “good cop” turning them in, it is from some civillian? Either there are no good cops out there (or so few that it doesn’t matter) or the “good” ones are only good in the “moral” sense but not in the sense of being observant enough to notice wrongful conduct in their ranks. (Which is supposedly what makes a cop a “good” cop – being observant and perceptive when it comes to crime)
I really wish I knew the answer to the question. I suspect it’s a far more difficult question than I tend to portray here, with the same cop whose “bad” one moment “good” the next. We tend to categorize people by whatever brings them onto our radar, the same being true for defendants as well, when they are three dimensional. We just don’t see the other dimensions.
This is why I keep writing about the cultural aspect. It’s beyond individual failings, or the pervasive “one bad apple” excuse. It’s about a culture of entitlement. But even here, law enforcement officers deny it and excuse it. Am I wrong? I don’t think so, but as long as everyone hides behind excuses, attacks and rationalizations, we’ll never have a real discussion about the root of the problem.
I would hazard that the reason it is never a “good” cop that turns in the “bad”, outside of whether or not the good are the majority, is that the vast majority believe that their first duty is to each other.
As an aside, and confirming both my comment and your’s about rationalizations, have you seen the Cops Writing Cops website?
Indeed I have seen cops writing cops, and posted about it a while back. If one needs evidence of the existence of cop culture, look no further.
As this horse continues to be beat to death, there is no doubt that these cops deserve to lose their jobs and more. Whether they are prosecuted or not is normally left up to the decision of the DA or State’s Attorney. Why is it assumed that these cops committed their offenses in the presence of another cops? Not all police departments have cops partnered up. Not all cops have the attitude of entitlement. There are no excuses or rationalizations that justify a police officer abusing his/her power or thinking he or she has any special entitlements as a cop! Many police departments have policies about freebies because it can be viewed as corruption! And there are many examples of cops losing their jobs over what they perceived as their right of entitlement. But to think that this perception of entitlement is confined to cops is not right either. There are many young people in the work place that think they have also have certain entitlements. The overall issue of entitlement goes beyond cops!
The reason that it’s assumed that these cops committed their offenses in the presence of other cops is, roughly, the same reason that, if you’re out on the South Dakota plains and hear hoofbeats, you think “horses” and not “zebras.”
That said, you’re quite right that there are many people who are filled with a sense of entitlement; I think it’s not unreasonable to, upon, occasion, focus on those entitlement-filled people who carry guns and badges and are at least arguably largely and demonstrably far too often put beyond the checks on behavior that other people — the ones without the guns and badges — are subject to.
And, yup, whether or not police officers who act criminally is often left to the local prosecutors, who are professionally intimately involved with and dependent on said cops.
This is a bug, not a feature.
Although, if one has a strong stomach and is willing to look further, there are many places to see evidence of the existence of a very sick culture within, at least, some parts of the cop community.
Here’s one“>http://www.officer.com/interactive/2007/09/21/wagons/#comments>one.
I think it’s a slippery slope thing, myself, combined with differing cultures in different agencies/departments.
I’ve never seen this before. I smell a post coming…
Thanks for this one. I owe you. Again.
EJB,
It’s highly unlikely that you will find someone more fair-minded, even sympathetic, to police around here than J-dog. He’s closer to one of yours than one of mine. But Joel sees the problem that seems to perpetually elude the cop, and more importantly, is pushed further away from the police position as the protestations get stronger.
We don’t beat this horse to death. It’s a new horse on a daily (if not more frequent) basis. No need to rehash old news to make a point when every day brings us a new stallion.
You’re welcome, of course.
For whatever it’s worth, I think a lot of Chicago cops would agree with you in this particular case.
I’ve been following the commentary in one of the local police blogs, and this incident seems to have crossed the line. As they point out, pulling a gun and taking stuff without paying for it is Armed Robbery, yet all she got was a suspension.
In Chicago, this then raises the question of who at City Hall is clouting for her, and why? The police board is a civilian body that is widely perceived by cops to be under the mayor’s thumb.
As for what her partner was doing, she doesn’t have one. Apparently she was injured at the police academy, so she’s been on a desk job for 14 years.
Her embarassing behavior, her obvious clout baby status, and her lack of “real cop” cred add up to almost no sympathy at all from fellow officers.
One only needs to pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV or click on a news website to see where a police officer in some major city or some small town in South Dakota has done something wrong or broken some law. It is pretty common place and yet it seems that a cop breaking the law or acting out of a false sense of entitlement is always deemed more newsworthy than when Average Joe does the same thing. I liken it to taking a criminal investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office when a cop, politician, public servant, a judge or an attorney is involved; you can almost always bet your paycheck that the case will be accepted for prosecution. Why? Because it is deemed newsworthy. It not that these folks are any different than the rest of the citizens in that community that break the law, it is because of their status or position within the community and the government is out to prove that these type of folks will not be permitted to break the law and rightfully so. The only problem is when Average Joe commits the same offense, it may or may not be accepted for prosecution. Different standards for different folks!
I am not standing up for a cop that has broken the law or thinks that he has some type of entitlement. On the contrary, I fully agree with you. It’s wrong. But we will have to agree to disagree – to me, it is the same horse with a different name or different breed but a horse is a horse. There are bad cops out there and they need to be dealt with to whatever extent possible. I just don’t think we need to be reminded of it once or twice a week.
By now, we all know that there are bad cops out there. I would prefer to see some solutions offered to the problem rather than rehash the same old problem. And I do protest when every cop in the country is lumped into the same group that has broken the law or taken an unjustified entitlement. Every Catholic priest is not a child molester, every teacher is not sleeping with his/her students, every politician is not crooked, every attorney is not a liar and snake and every cop is not bad and that is my main point.
P.S. J-dog is too busy deciding whether there are horses or zebras charging him while he is walking the plains in South Dakota!! LOL
There’s a reason why it’s news when the perp is a cop. IT’S A COP! These are the people to whom we give guns and shields, and then let them out on the street to use them against other people. We hold them to a higher standard.
Judges and elected officials, like cops, are public servants, given the ability to exercise powers reserved to the government. They exercise a greater power than that which they would be endowed as individuals, and are accordingly held to a higher standard.
Are cop human? Of course, but we expect them to reflect the better qualities of humanity, not the worst. If the best we can expect is the worst, than we need to seriously rethink their existence and authority.
That said, EJB, so write me up a post of your solutions and I’ll publish it.
And I do protest when every cop in the country is lumped into the same group that has broken the law or taken an unjustified entitlement.
Perhaps you might consider taking such protests to places where such unfounded accusations actually, you know, happen? I’m fairly sensitive to both such overbroad accusations and to bogus accusations about such overbroad accusations; I haven’t seen the former here.
you can almost always bet your paycheck that the case will be accepted for prosecution.
If you do that, you’re going to lose a lot of paychecks. Care for an example or two?
Hell, locally, even when (after some, err, publicity) Landen Beard, the road-raging Robbinsdale road ranger, got indicted, the prosecution quite quietly and obligingly acceded to the defense’s request not to go forward. Let me suggest that if somebody who wasn’t an Only One was credibly accused of having shoved a gun in an expectant woman’s face while shouting, “I’m going to fucking kill you; I don’t care about jail!” after the grand jury indictment, a regular jury would more than likely have been asked to decide the validity of the charges.
I know it’ll injure my valued reputation for fairness, but something being too much for the Chicago cops sounds to me awfully like, “Smells bad enough to make a buzzard gag.”
I am not a sociologist and can not offer up a list of solutions. There is no doubt that police sub-cultures exist. The heads of police departments and federal agencies and the judicial districts of those departments and agencies need to work together to send the message to those cops/agents and to the general public that bad cops will not be tolerated and that bad cops will be held accountable for their actions. I have no problem with holding certain people to include cops to a higher standard but let’s condemn that bad cop or cops and not a whole department or agency because of one or two bad cops or agents. In some situations, a whole department may deserve condemnation but most times not.
I currently reside in the “Land of Corruption”, Louisiana and not by choice. In recent months there have been several incidents of “bad cops”, “bad cop decisions” and “bad police management” from at least three different departments in the Greater New Orleans area. In each case the news media and the public outcry has forced the resignation and/or firing of a chief, several supervisors and several officers within those departments. Several of these officers’ actions are being reviewed for criminal prosecution. A second police chief is currently under federal scrutiny for his actions and his department just under went a review from an independent consultant which was very critical of top management and the way the department has been run for many years. Hopefully, these type of actions will help to turn around the public’s view of these departments and their cops as well as cops in general. As I have stated in the past, I have no use for a bad cop. We may differ slightly on what constitutes a bad cop but in most cases I merely point out some points that I feel should be noted about the topic of discussion. That is the purpose of your blog, is it not?
I’m jumping down off my soap box, had enough for one day!
Forgive the pun, but what a cop-out. And lest we forget, it’s not just the cop who does something “bad”, but all the other law enforcers who facilitate, tolerate, turn a blind eye, ignore the “one bad apple.”
Maybe it is a cop-out but I can’t see where getting on your soap box and pointing out that another cop has done something wrong really accomplishes much either. One can find a article about a bad cop somewhere in the news on a daily basis. I am out of the game and I suggested that YOU provide a solution. To wit, you threw it back at me. You are still part of the system and if you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
You have convinced me that trying to respond to your whining about a bad apple cop is a waste of my time. Time to turn a blind eye and ignore your rhetoric!
Please unsubscribe me to your blog!!!
This is my last time at your website.
Wow, I never saw you as a “cut and run” type of guy. I’ve been acting on my solution for quite some time; do as much as I can to highlight the problem and create as much public recognition of the problem as possible, thereby generating public discontent at bad cops and their enablers, and hopefully resulting in an end to the toleration of this conduct within and without the police culture.
But you decided to call me whiny because you, after all your cheerleading for cops, have nothing to offer? Sorry we pressed you so hard. You will have to unsubscribe yourself, my friend, as you run away from another lost fight.
Not really cutting and running – I just know when I am beating my head against a wall. No sense in tormenting myself when I have nothing to really prove. I do admit I bore easy!!
I do apologize for accusing you of whining but singing the same song with a different tune…. just isn’t productive from my viewpoint.
Well how do you think I feel, all this time and effort I’ve put into you in the hopes of an epiphany. Stay the course. It will come to you eventually. They you can be the leader of the great “good cop” revolution.
Scott,
There may not be many cops out there who want to speak up about problems or have done so but there are at least a few. When they do speak up, generally they get vigorously hammered in many ways from their peers and sometimes from police administrators and crony politicians not happy with someone upsetting the “apple” cart. In the mind of some police administrators and politicians, it does no good for a locality’s image if misconduct comes to light.
Often, police administrators set poor examples for their subordinates.
In the recent raid conducted on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, the chief of police (Melvin High) responsible for the incident, refused to acknowledge the multitude of mistakes that occurred. He defended the raid. There is no doubt in my mind that at least some officers in his agency are acknowledging privately the extreme screw-up that took place at Calvo’s home. It would put their career on the guillotine if they spoke publicly. I am not defending that fear/weakness of speaking out, just stating facts. It greatly disappoints me to hear the strongly ingrained Code of Silence.
I think exposure of misconduct is necessary and needs to come first but something else is needed in order to create an “epiphany” in the minds/hearts of the many people responsible for abuse of authority. I am not sure what the something else is.
But where does this take us? Pointing out that “something else” is necessary, but having no “something else” to offer, is a dead end. We all know how and why we think police resist recognizing their problems, but do we do something or nothing? If there’s a better “something” that will give rise to an epiphany, then what is it? If we don’t know what it is, then we’re back at that dead end again. So where does this take us?
Nowhere(…”yet,” he added, with characteristic optimism); I don’t think that we — and I’m pointing the finger at every bit as much myself as much as anybody else — have a grip on the depth and breadth of the problem, much less are ready to figure out how to handle it.
One example of how we don’t yet get it right here: http://www.twincitiescarry.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9599 .